STEVE CORONELLA: In Ireland, a New England fan savors string of super moments

Wednesday

Jan 24, 2018 at 12:01 AMApr 2, 2018 at 2:42 PM

Steve Coronella

DUBLIN – As Hub sports fans prepare for another championship game with hometown involvement – the 15th such appearance of a Boston team in the last two decades – I’d like to offer a broader perspective.

First of all, it goes without saying that every Bostonian – indeed every New Englander – should cherish this unique period in our sporting history. Those of us who came of age in the final quarter of the 20th century know that not every season will conclude with the Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics or Patriots competing for a title. Other cities appear to have teams too, and it's inevitable that one of their franchises will occasionally take part in the World Series, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Championship, or Super Bowl.

In a more benevolent vein: if we remove our provincial blinders for a moment, we'll come to discover that there's a wider world of sports to enjoy.

My advice here comes from personal experience. When I moved to Dublin in 1992, leaving behind a lifetime of devotion to the Hub’s legendary franchises, I was adrift in a sports sense. The Irish capital has five semi-pro soccer teams, but the national league in which they toil suffers from poor attendance, lackluster playing grounds, and stuck-in-the-mud management. Dublin also has a thriving amateur sports scene, thanks in large part to the Gaelic Athletic Association, but the GAA is primarily a club-based organization that fields locally-sourced adult and youth teams.

As a result, I looked across the Irish Sea to English soccer to feed my pro sports fix. Much like the moribund NBA before the blessed arrival of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in 1979, the once drab British game was reborn – and renamed the Premier League – in the early 1990s, courtesy of a massive injection of broadcast revenue from Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Sports network.

Talent has inevitably followed this money trail, so that with a few exceptions – Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo spring instantly to mind – England is an attractive spot these days for soccer’s international superstars as well as the game’s journeymen players.

Finding myself cut off from Boston’s rich sporting history, I was forced to adopt a new team. In my case, it was Manchester United, due to the club’s relentless global marketing as well as my interest in Roy Keane, Man. U’s mercurial Irish captain at the time.

I didn’t turn my back on my hometown teams, but in those early Internet years, when computers were costly and dial-up connections difficult and unreliable, I was lucky to get box scores and game reports. Finding an actual telecast involving the Red Sox or Patriots was unthinkable.

And guess what? Without a heartfelt connection to any team on this side of the pond – my relationship with Man. U, after all, was a marriage of convenience – I’ve come to appreciate sporting contests for their own sake, whether the game in question is soccer, rugby or even cricket.

These days I’m more inclined to root for Cuala, my son’s GAA club, which last year became the first Dublin outfit to win an All-Ireland hurling title. But the principle still holds: you don’t need to have a history with a particular team or franchise in order to enjoy one of their games.

As for this year's Super Bowl, the Brits have embraced “American football” with gusto – four unremarkable regular season games in London last year drew a collective 322,000 fans to the Wembley and Twickenham stadiums – so the BBC is wisely offering the NFL's annual extravaganza as a late-night treat.

Which is good news for this far-flung Boston fan, who'll be burning the midnight oil on February 4th, willing the Patriots to a record-tying sixth Super Bowl victory.

Medford native Steve Coronella has lived in Ireland since 1992. He is the author of “Designing Dev,” a comic novel about an Irish-American lad from Boston who runs for the Irish presidency. His latest book is “Entering Medford – And Other Destinations.”

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